When attending a public event, people may buy various concessions, souvenirs, and services. Typically, in order to obtain a specific order of any of the wares sold at the event, a customer would need to stand in line, order their desired products, and wait for their order to be fulfilled. Depending on the size of the event, this process may take as long as fifteen to twenty minutes or more, during which time the customer may miss desirable or important portions of the event. With the disadvantages of this process of obtaining specific product orders firmly in the minds of each customer, many potential sales may be lost due to a customer not wanting to miss any of the event, not wanting to wait in line for extended periods of time, or both.
As an alternative to waiting in line, some events have portable vendors. The portable vendors may travel throughout the event and sell a particular product or a set of products, such as a portable vendor selling pizza slices or another portable vendor selling hamburgers and hot dogs. In the event of a portable vendor passing a customer's location, the customer may place product orders locally without having to wait in line. Using a portable vendor, customers may not place specific orders for food, but rather must order a product that the portable vendor is carrying.
At some events, such as at a restaurant or club, a waiter may attend to a customer at the customer's location. The waiter may take specific product orders from a customer and deliver them to the customer's location. While waiters may be viable at small events, they are not cost effective at larger events such as sporting events. At the smaller events, using a waiter may result in a customer taking up event space for longer periods of time if the waiter is not available when the customer is ready to place an order than if an order was immediately taken once the customer was ready.